#3 Philly Muffles #6 Carolina, 85-46

By Justice Feelgood Marshall, Last updated Thu Apr 16 2009 8:26pm

RALEIGH, NC -- Carolina's Dorton Arena has long had a reputation for being a tough place for away teams to win, but somebody forgot to tell #3 Philly. The girls from up north played a consistent points-denial strategy against the home team, keeping them to a shockingly low 10 points in the first half on their way to a remarkable 85-46 final.

Read the play-by play in the archived DNN text boutcast, sponsored by Sin City Skates.

Though Carolina drew first blood in this matchup with a quick 2-0 opening jam for Carolina's Holly Wanna Crackya over Philly's Mo Pain, the Carolina offense ground to a near halt over the ensuing 29 minutes. Philly didn't dominate the pack play, but was extremely effective at nabbing lead jammer and bottling up Carolina jammers just long enough for the Philly girls to take low-scoring shutout jams. There were almost no big jams through the evening, but the small-ball inexorably increased the margin throughout the half.

On the jam line, Carolina appeared to be suffering from some depth issues after having lost a significant amount of their jamming core since 2008 to retirement or injury -- no Zella Lugosi, no Roxy Rockett, and no Shirley Temper left the speedy Holly Wanna Crackya and DVS as the primary star-wearers, occasionally augmented by Kitty Crowbar and Princess America.

But it was the success of the Philly defense in getting lead jammer, not ineffectiveness on the part of Carolina's jammers, that was the story. Carolina's jammers rarely got lapped, but usually completed their opening pass significantly later than the Philly jammers, leaving Carolina jammers racing to catch up only to be rewarded with the four whistles just as they reached scoring position.

About 10 minutes into the half, Carolina had only managed to add a single point to their total while Philly had picked up 20, leaving the score at 20-3 with 19 minutes to play in the first. When Carolina's Holly Wanna Crackya got 4 points on the ensuring jam to make it 22-7, that would stand as Carolina's highest scoring jam of the first thirty minutes.

With just under 12 minutes to play, Carolina's DVS got a rare lead jammer call for the home team, but it only illustrated Carolina's offensive struggles -- she couldn't get much daylight on opposing jammer Teflon Donna, and had to settle for a 1-0 jam that inched the score to 33-10.

And that was the end of the Carolina scoring for the rest of the half, as Philly continued to nick them to death -- 5-0, 5-0, 2-0 and 2-0 with three scoreless jams in the mix to make it 47-10 at the halftime break. A normally raucous Dorton crowd didn't have too many opportunities to get into the game for the first 30 minutes.

The second half's point totals were far closer -- 38 for Philly to 36 for Carolina -- but most of Carolina's points were scored after Philly had all but put the game away, opening up a 57 point lead at 77-20 with just over 11 minutes to play. Carolina went on a nice 26-8 run at that point to close the game, featuring 9-0 runs for Holly Wanna Crackya and DVS, but Philly had pulled too far away to catch.

In individual play, Carolina's Princess America and Ms. Anthrope the Mordant had a number of fine blocking turns controlling the front of the pack, most memorably in the first jam of the second half, when Philly started with a 4-2 advantage in the pack and threatened for a big jam, but was held off for a full 2 minutes by Mordant and Princess teamwork at the head of the pack. Kelly Clocks'Em, usually trading pivot duties with Princess, Kitty Crowbar and Bianca O'Blivion also stood out as effective pack elements.

Philly, for their part, was missing one of their best jammers in Persephone, but didn't look like a team with holes in their roster, able to send 6 girls to the jam line throughout the evening. Shenita Stretcher absorbed a number of hard hits as jammer and kept trucking, while the coolly reliable Teflon Donna and scrappy Mo Pain turned in their usually effective performances with the jam star. Violet Temper, Gloria Grindem and Ivana Rock also took the star on a handful of occasions for Philly.

In the pack Philly was missing a big hitter in Nina Knockout, but all night long Philly married smart positional and physical play, using their slight but noticeable size advantage to take over the key points on the track and then using positional play to keep them. Gloria Grindem, Ivana Rock and Shenita Stretcher all seemed to be giving Carolina jammers particular problems, and Teflon Donna was a thorn in Carolina's side even as a jammer, playing some clock-killing jammer D on multiple occasions.

Philly is right back in action this weekend, this time going north to take on #8 Boston -- that action will be covered in a text boutcast by DNN from Bone Crawford and Ruby Khan. Carolina hosts yet another WFTDA East top-ten matchup in about a month, as they battle ascendant #7 Charm City.

Photos: Akira Takahashi